File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1998/marxism-international.9804, message 98


Date: Thu, 09 Apr 1998 18:53:47 -0700
From: David Stevens <phylstevens-AT-worldnet.att.net>
Subject: M-I: Mumia Abu-Jamal for President!


Let's draft Mumia Abu-Jamal as our candidate for President
of the United States.  We can't change the system by voting;
but we can use the soapboxes and the airtime to focus on the
racist nature of capitalist class justice.

 A comrade recently made me look up some old stuff which
reminded me of "the best electoral campaign never conducted"
by Marxists in the United States, ninety years ago:

 "Morrie R. Preston, an official of the Industrial Workers
of the World, in exercising the right to picket, was attacked
by the proprietor of a restaurant the employees of which
were out on strike.  The propietor leveled a pistol at
Preston; Preston in self-defense drew his gun and laid low
the man who wanted to take his life.  Class justice,
capitalist class justice, declared that Preston was
guilty of murder." [*]

 Preston got twenty-five years at hard labor.  In 1908,
the Socialist Labor Party nominated Morrie Preston to be
its Presidential candidate.

 Morrie Preston wasn't up to the task; his lawyers told
Preston he'd screw up his chances on appeal if he were
to run for president on a platform of recognizing the
very class war which had already taken him prisoner.
Preston therefore refused the SLP nomination.

 But I very much like that SLP idea of running Preston
as point-blank case of class justice on the picket line.

 Last year in news:alt.politics.socialism.trotsky , John
Holmes and others suggested Mumia Abu-Jamal as candidate
for President of the United States.  I think this is an
excellent idea.

 I hope Mumia will be free before two more years elapse.
But if he is still in prison, that is simply all the more
reason to make him our candidate for President.

- David Stevens

 Freedom for the "Voice of the Voiceless!"
   Expose Capitalist Class Justice!
    Mumia Abu-Jamal for President!

[*] Rudolf Katz, "With DeLeon since '89," published in
    "Daniel DeLeon: The Man and His Work, A Symposium,"
    (c) 1919 New York Labor News (1969), p. 148-149.


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